{"id":5129,"date":"2012-08-06T15:49:09","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T19:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=5129"},"modified":"2012-08-06T15:49:09","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T19:49:09","slug":"the-mindless-laziness-of-both-sides-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2012\/08\/06\/the-mindless-laziness-of-both-sides-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mindless Laziness of &#8220;Both Sides Do It!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing on a theme:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Basically, saying &#8220;both sides do it&#8221; is a form of trolling. In almost every case, when a Very Serious Person says &#8220;both sides do it,&#8221; &#8220;both sides are to blame&#8221; or any of its variants, it is to shut down discussion, not to bring it to a deeper, more nuanced level. (There are exceptions, but they are few. We&#8217;ll delve into this further in future posts.) Obsessing about &#8220;tone&#8221; and other cosmetics serves the same function. &#8216;Sensible Centrism&#8217; is very popular because it gives the appearance of wisdom, objectivity, independence, impartiality and so on without having to commit to much of anything.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/vagabondscholar.blogspot.com\/2012\/08\/both-sides-do-it-partisanship-redux.html\">More at Vagabond Scholar<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing on a theme: &#8220;Basically, saying &#8220;both sides do it&#8221; is a form of trolling. In almost every case, when a Very Serious Person says &#8220;both sides do it,&#8221; &#8220;both sides are to blame&#8221; or any of its variants, it is to shut down discussion, not to bring it to a deeper, more nuanced level. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5130,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions\/5130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}